“Sera?” Florian asked, in her long silence.
“Jacques is going to name Khalid as Proxy Councillor. He may be hoping we’ll raise the bet and bid him back. But we have to be able to guarantee his life. That executive position doesn’t help him at all if he’s dead. Or if his family is. Estranged daughter?”
Catlin whipped out her handheld. She said, memory refresher, “Solo. No minor dependents. No relationships since 2421. Uncontested division of household. Estranged daughter, grandchild, great‑grandchildren, affiliated with former partner, not genetically related to Jacques.”
Solo fit a pattern, of people who made it to directorships and Council seats. Including Yanni. “Whereabouts of next‑ofs and former partner: Novgorod.”
“Novgorod,” Catlin confirmed.
“Too available. Relay that info to Yanni, not to Hicks. TellYanni we’re not relaying it to Hicks.” Yanni would say to her, What do you expect me to do about it, without Hicks? “Tell him he’s got to get some meaningful security around Jacques’s family and friends. And Jacques. And damn it, it’ll look like hell if we pull ReseuneSec in to guard him. Tell Yanni that Spurlin was murdered. That’s proof enough. Let the OCI request Stateto get agents in to guard Jacques, and our bloc will back him in Council for doing it. Andtell Yanni I say keep Hicks in the dark on the whole move.”
“Yes, sera,” Florian said, and got on the phone. She heard him talking to Yanni’s office manager, Chloe. “Sera’s orders. Urgent message for Yanni.”
Yanni was going to spit if she kept interfering and nagging him step by step, but she was about two jumps short of voicing the code to override Base Two as it was, and blood was rushing through her veins, pushing her to do something, take action, go withYanni to Novgorod. She’d crippled Khalid politically before. Her appearance would remind audiences all over Cyteen and Union how that had played out.
But that wasn’t highly prudent to do. Something about all their eggs in one basket and notdeclaring war on Khalid until they’d gotten Jacques back in line.
Damn Jacques for not following the script. But Jacques sat in the middle of the Defense Tower, where there were abundant holdovers from the Khalid regime, people who could deliver a message. It didn’t matter that Khalid was on the station. His agents were clearly in Novgorod.
Tell Yanni I’ll be there if I have to, she almost added, but she bit her tongue on it. Yanni was the one who’d been dealing with Jacques, Yanni had made the deals with Jacques andCorain, and she hoped she hadn’t enabled this mess by refusing to let Yanni fly down there the day Spurlin died and start running from one to the other making sure the deals he’d made held. He hadn’t accused her in that regard. But there could be some connection.
There could equally well have been a bad outcome to her letting Yanni go there too soon and check into the hotel across the park from the hotel that had blown up and caught fire the month Denys died. There were crazy people in Novgorod. Worse, there was something very, very high‑level behind Spurlin’s death, and maybe behind the rest of it, and Eversnow–God knew what it had to do with anything, but it was a question.
She folded the mini and set it aside on the couch, knowing it would turn up again on her desk the minute she left the room. She decided she’d call the gang down. Tell them bring the pizza with them, her place was focused down on staff, on a minimal dinner and Cook’s service for all the staff she had staying up and taking care of business.
So she did that. Or she told Theo to do it, and told Jory leave the computer, she might need it.
What she needed at the moment Florian was too busy to provide. And she didn’t want anybody else. Not the way she was now. She found herself pacing, looked down at Sam’s river underneath her feet, glowing with light, the rest of Sam’s river reflecting the blue fish wall, reminding her of a tranquility that didn’t exist in the world.
So Jacques had the reins in his hands and wasn’t going to do what he’d promised Reseune he’d do–retreat quietly as Lynch had done and leave a Proxy in charge of Defense; draw his salary for two years and then go take his nice posh executive post. They’d had it all set up for Jacques, a do‑nothing Councillor, to do nothing another two years and still know his job was waiting for him. And Hicks had flown down there to get that agreement. Well, thathadn’t gone outstandingly well, had it?
Maybe Jacques just wanted Yanni to come down there in person and hold his hand through the process. Maybe he wanted face‑to‑face assurance. She doubted that was the game.
She paced. She walked up to the fish wall and watched the fish. She’d gotten rather fond of the little pearly jawfish–that was their real name: opistognathus aurifrons–golden‑brow–that made their home in the substrate, right by a rock. They came half‑out to see her, tails still in their burrow. They were white, with a blueish opal look to their fins, pale yellow head. Little jewels. Their world was on that side of the glass, hers on this one; and this evening their world was running much more smoothly than hers.
The big Achilles tang came sweeping past, black, orange‑detailed, and elegant, acanthurus achilles.The jawfish dived into their burrows, and the Achilles, ominous shadow, went on to terrify the rabbitfish, who dreaded everything.
Small wars. Small problems. Everlasting, between species that had been conducting their same business and having the same quarrels since the last ice flowed on Earth.
The more intelligent of old Earth’s species weren’t doing much better, locally.
A small commotion drew Theo and Jory to the front door, and they admitted Amy and Maddy, Tommy with a stack of pizza containers, and the rest of the gang.
“Are we doing anything yet?” Amy asked in the same cheerful tone she’d used on pranks and schemes against Denys, not so many years ago. It was incongruous. It filled her with an irrational sense of capability. Are we doing anything yet?
But they weren’t within striking distance of this problem. Just Yanni was. And it was a two‑way strike potential.
“Yanni’s going. I cleared Reseune One to fuel. He’ll probably go tonight.”
“He will, sera,” Florian said. “He’s called for a car. Ten of ReseuneSec’s higher officers are going with him.”
“Backgrounds,” she said. “Tell Rafael do it.”
“Yes, sera,” Florian said, and went off to the foyer to do it quietly.
Meanwhile Tommy was laying out the pizza containers on available tables, and Mischa opened them one after the other. The smell wafted through the living room.
“Catlin,” she said, “tell kitchen we’d like some wine.” She’d have one. She’d earned it. But no other, not tonight. “Call Justin. Tell him and Grant come across. We’re having an election party.”
“But Jacques didn’t name Bigelow,” Amy said.
“That’s why Yanni’s on his way to Novgorod,” she said, and shopped among pizzas, finding her favorite, bacon and basil. She took a slice in her fingers. “Jacques has weasled.”
“Is that a word?”
“An old word for a slinky little mammal. He’s weasled. We don’t know if somebody’s gotten to him, or if he’s just waiting for Yanni to show up in person and ask him nicely. If he does something like name Khalid–he’s been gotten to.”
“Somebody can file on him in two months,” Tommy said. Tommy had probably looked it up.
“They can,” Ari said, “and somebody’s bound to, Bigelow on one side, and Khalid on the other, and we go another seven months trying to get somebody elected who’s competent. Don’t talk to me about Khalid. I’m eating.”